my predictions: 1) Dale Thorn will become another Kagalenko and will mailbomb mods 2) 90% of cypherpunks-moderated will be about moderation and censorship 3) there will be massive openings of alternative cypherpunks mailing lists, all doomed to fail 4) several alt.* newsgroups like alt.cypherpunks will be created 5) main business of freedom-knights will be shitting and spitting at cypherpunks in alt.cypherpunks 6) moderators will spend increasing amounts of time on their work 7) crossposting between alt.cypherpunks and mail.cypherpunks will be prohibited by alt.cypherpunks FAQ, posted monthly by Dr. John Martin Grubor igor Adam Back wrote:
It's occured to me recently that Dimitri's posts are not being read correctly, it is not the content which is the point, nor the superficial lack of crypto relevance.
Dimitri is an intelligent guy, and has a high level of crypto expertise (he has a PhD on a cryptography topic). It is my belief that his posts can only be understood in a "meta" sense -- he is engaged in a highly complex cryptographic experiment. People who read and respond to his individual posts are the unwitting subjects in his experiments. His posts and the responses to them are actually the data-set for a thorough cryptanalysis of mailing list threats. His current topic under investigation is Denial of Service (DoS) attacks on mailing lists.
Denial of service on mailing lists is a complex business, and requires expert human input to be done properly.
Dimitri has systematically explored these types of posting behaviour:
1. Posting only crypto relevant material. 2. Interspersing crypto relevant posts with hand personalised flame bait. 3. Interspersing crypto relevant posts with bot generated flame bait. 4. Interspersing crypto relevant posts with news stories. 5. Posting only non crypto relevant material.
The alert reader will recall these phases of posting style (currently we are in sub experiment 5, the other phases have occured over a protracted period of intensive experimentation, and some newer readers may have missed earlier phases).
There were other experiments which may or may not have been part of Dimitri's series of DoS experiments:
6. Subscribing the list to itself (testing list resilience to recursion)
7. Forging posts to carefully selected newsgroups with "cypherpunks@toad.com" as the sender (this indirectly adds user "cypherpunks@toad.com" to many direct marketing lists as direct marketers make use of email addresses scanned from newsgroups).
8. The "UNSCRIVE" and other spelling variations of "unsubscribe" epidemic, and ensuing instructions and discussion
9. Subscribing the list to other lists
10. Bot generated flame bait posted anonymously (with ascii art)
From the post I am following up to the reader will observe an oblique reference to the transition from phase 4 of the experiments to the current phase, phase 5 (the reader will also note references to experimental results c and d described below):
Dimitri Vulis <dlv@bwalk.dm.com> writes:
One memorable "censorship" incident occurred when the lying cocksucker John Gilmore (spit) forcibly unsubscribed me from this list because he didn't like the contents of my submissions - or did you forget already? Look up Declan's disgraceful writeup on Netly News archives.
At that time most valuable contributors to this list (such as myself) resolved not to contribute crypto-relevant content to a censored forum. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
More widely read cypherpunks will know that Dimitri has performed similar experiments in other fora -- his systematic experiments in numerous USENET newsgroups resulted in the his receiving the prestigious KOTM ("Kook Of The Month") award.
His main experimental results to date with the cypherpunks mailing list series of experiments have been:
a) many cypherpunks publically announcing kill filing him
b) numerous cypherpunks suggesting censoring him (a particularly interesting result considering the libertarian leanings of many on this list)
c) the outstanding experimental result of being forcibly unsubscribed from the list, and of being barred from resubscribing by John Gilmore. (creator of alt.* USENET newsgroup hierarchy, and well know freespeech advocate)
d) another interesting, incidental experimental result was provided by Declan McCullagh in his Netly News piece in prematurely, and entirely unwittingly, publishing some of Dimitri's expermiental data-set.
e) the main experimental result: the list shortly moving to a moderated form, seemingly at the request of Sandy Sandfort, with agreement from John Gilmore.
These experimental results are quite significant, when taken in the context of the anti-censorship, libertarian, pro-freespeech environment of the cypherpunks mailing list. Dimitri should be congratulated on his outstanding work.
I await with interest the last phases of Dimitri's experiment, when the cypherpunks list becomes a moderated forum. My suggestions for interesting experiments during the moderated phase are:
1. Testing the limits of Dale Thorn's anti-censorship sentiments (for those who don't read Dale, he is subscribed to "cypherpunks-unedited" in preparation for the moderation).
2. Testing Sandy Sandforts rejection criteria.
3. Testing Sandy Sandforts rejection rate for long crypto relevant posts interspersed with irrelevant flame bait.
4. Testing Sandy Sandforts rejection rate for posts with flame bait .sigs
I hope Dimitri's selfless efforts in furthering understanding of DoS attacks on mailing lists is properly acknowledged when he publishes his findings on completion of his experiments. I also hope that Dimitri will document his recommendations for mailing list configuration and management in light of his experiments.
Adam -- print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`
- Igor.